Tuesday, October 2, 2007

It's About Time For The "Incident"

August 1964 -- The war hawks were conducting business as usual. Covert operations against North Vietnam had been ongoing for quite some time -- attacks on radio transmitters and radar sites in coastal areas by South Vietnamese Navy patrol boats -- planned, equipped and financed by the Pentagon, and supported by the US Navy. The war hawks got what they wanted on August 2nd when the destroyer USS Maddox, on patrol in the Gulf of Tonkin, came under fire in international waters from three North Vietnamese gunboats. No real damage was done to the Maddox. The torpedoes missed, and one machine gun bullet lodged in one of the boat's stacks. The gunboats were driven off by return fire from the Maddox and planes launched from the carrier USS Ticonderoga. President Johnson decided not to retaliate just yet, but warned Hanoi against "any further unprovoked offensive military action against United States forces". Unprovoked? Yeah right. Both sides knew the score. Hanoi had already lodged a formal protest over the attacks on its territory by American "puppet" forces. They knew the Maddox was involved in an operation attacking the islands of Hon Me and Hon Nieu just the day before, their mission being to sniff out fresh targets by monitoring the spike in radar and radio signals just after the attacks. The gunboat attack on the Maddox was a personal message to Johnson. Not to be out-hawked, Johnson ordered another destroyer, the USS Turner Joy, to accompany the Maddox on further patrols in the same area, ratcheting up the tension another notch. He had shown restraint to the American public, but now he was itching for a fight.

Two days later, "freak weather effects," "almost total darkness" and an "overeager sonarman" who "was hearing his ship's own propeller beat" caused a panic aboard the Maddox and the Turner Joy. The infamous "Gulf Of Tonkin Incident" had begun. For two and a half hours the sailors evaded ghost torpedoes, called in air strikes from the Ticonderoga, and fired wildly at boats that probably never existed -- all the while sending frantic "Flash Priority" messages to Washington, reporting on the progress of the ongoing "engagement". When the smoke cleared, Captain John J. Herrick issued this message:

"Review of action makes many reported contacts and torpedoes fired appear doubtful. Freak weather effects on radar and overeager sonarmen may have accounted for many reports. No actual visual sightings by Maddox. Suggest complete evaluation before any further action taken."

Any sane, prudent leader would order that complete evaluation before taking further action, but not a war hawk like Lyndon B. Johnson. He ordered immediate "retaliatory" airstrikes against targets in North Vietnam. Old Lyndon later confided: "For all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there."

The rest is sad, shameful history. The press immediately started cheerleading. Congress didn't ask any questions. Johnson got his Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. The military-industrial complex got their billions of taxpayer dollars. The American people got over 58,000 deaths and 350,000 casualties, and the Vietnamese deaths numbered in the millions. Quite a legacy for old Lyndon the bad-ass Texas war hawk.

October 2007 --The war hawks are conducting business as usual. Forget the fact that Iraq is an unmitigated clusterfuck. That doesn't matter to a bad-ass Texas war hawk like George W. Bush or a hell-bent psycho like Dick Cheney. They aren't up for re-election, and the Republicans are screwed next time anyway. The Democrats are going to have to clean up the mess. Besides, everything is going great for the all-important cronies in the military-industrial complex. They're raking in billions and ready to go for more. Forget our nation's future, and the future of the world for that matter. Strap on your pig snout and think like a heartless, greed-driven warmonger for a minute. The next target is Iran, and we almost have them surrounded.

To the east -- Afghanistan is occupied and Pakistan is our ally. Well, Musharraf is anyway. To the west -- Iraq is occupied and Kuwait is practically our own private military base. The Saudis to the south are allied with us and certainly no friends of Shiite-led Iran. But what about that pesky Strait of Hormuz? If Iran could disrupt shipping there, they would immediately cut off 20% of the world's oil supply. It's imperative that it be kept open. Three U.S. Navy aircraft carrier strike groups operating in the Persian Gulf should do the trick. The USS Enterprise strike group has been there for a while, and the USS Nimitz and USS Truman groups just arrived at the end of September. All of the pieces are in place to keep the strait open while also raining a heap of good old "shock and awe" down on the heads of those uppity Iranians. The propaganda campaign has been pretty successful so far. Nobody fell for Iran as an imminent nuclear threat, but the "Iran meddling in our business in Iraq" campaign seems to be getting some traction. We got our Kyl Amendment from Congress, didn't we? Hell, that's almost as good as a preemptive Gulf of Tonkin Resolution! The plans are all drawn up. Now all we need is the "incident".

So what will the "incident" be? An "unprovoked" attack on our Navy in the Persian Gulf, just like in 1964? An "engagement" on the Iran-Iraq border? A "terrorist attack" blamed on the Iranians? The possibilities are just about endless, but the "incident" is inevitable, and no matter what it is, the "reaction" is predictable. The "retaliatory" bombing will immediately begin. The press will start cheerleading, and Congress won't ask any questions. The cronies will get more billions, and the corpses will pile up. As usual, the long-term consequences haven't been planned for, or even considered. The next president will have to deal with them, and Bush will leave us three wars as a parting gift. Quite a legacy for old George the bad-ass Texas war hawk.

Update: October 6, 2007 --Today, White House mouthpiece General David Petraeus, speaking at a US military base 20 miles from the Iranian border, escalated the accusations of Iran's interference in Iraq and accused Tehran's ambassador to Baghdad of being a member of the Revolutionary Guard'sQuds force. According to Petraeus: "They are responsible for providing the weapons, the training, the funding and in some cases the direction for operations that have indeed killed U.S. soldiers".

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Ask Samuel Adams:

About who is to blame for the erosion of your constitutional rights ...

Samuel Adams Says:

The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.

Ask Alexander Hamilton:

About a nation that condones torture when faced with danger ...

Alexander Hamilton Says:

A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one.... Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.

Ask Patrick Henry:

About leaders who ignore subpoenas, destroy public records, and abuse executive privilege ...

Patrick Henry Says:

The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them. The most iniquitous plots may be carried on against their liberty and happiness.I am not an advocate for divulging indiscriminately all the operations of government, though the practice of our ancestors in some degree justifies it. Such transactions as relate to military operations or affairs of great consequence, the immediate promulgation of which might defeat the interests of the community, I would not wish to be published, till the end which required their secrecy should have been effected. But to cover, with the veil of secrecy, the common routine of business, is an abomination in the eyes of every intelligent man, and every friend to his country.

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The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual, and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty.

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About about what happens when the people become complacent ...

John Adams Says:

Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers and destroyers press upon them so fast that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachments is to grow every day more encroaching; like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour.

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Thomas Jefferson Says:

I hold it that a little rebellion nowand then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions,indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.

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James Madison Says:

In time of actual war, great discretionary powers are constantly given to theExecutive Magistrate.Constant apprehension ofWar, has the same tendency to render the head too large for the body. A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defense against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.

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Abraham Lincoln Says:

The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.

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Theodore Roosevelt Says:

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Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.

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In the councils of government,we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

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